The new Amazon Fire TV Stick 2 is starting to arrive early to some customers. I haven’t received mine yet, but go ahead and post any questions you have in the comments below and I’ll try to answer them once it arrives. If you’ve already received your new Fire TV Stick 2, it’d be great if you could help answer questions as well.
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I guess the big one is performance: How does it compare to the full-size FireTV, or the original stick?
I switched my Fire TV Stick out for a Roku Streaming Stick earlier this year just because the Fire stick felt so slow and the Roku loads everything lightning fast. I’m particularly interested in how PS Vue performs on the new stick since it’s singularly awful on the original.
I’ll definitely be comparing the new Stick with the existing devices, but, I’m open to any specific ideas people have for comparisons.
Well, I think the AFTVNEWS gold standard has previously been set with the side by side GTA comparison. Why break what isn’t broken? :-)
With that, I might suggest comparing some lossless blu-ray rips over 802.11n in Kodi, or MrMC, or SPMC, to test processing power, and then over 802.11ac (which the older stick can’t do) to determine how much of the difference over 802.11n is due to wifi bandwidth.
Can the USB port on a television power the device? Although discouraged, it worked fine on the 1st gen, so I’m curious about the 2nd gen.
Also, since this device has a dual-band antenna, how stable is the 5GHz connection?
Powering off a USB port will be tough to test since different TVs output different amounts of power through their USB port. I imagine since the new Stick 2 is more powerful that it will be less likely to work with a TV’s USB port than the Stick 1.
I’ll definitely try to test 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz wifi on the new Stick.
It has more cores, but is using 28nm instead of 40nm, so it may be more energy efficient than the old model.
Side-by-side performance test with basic interface, load times, and Kodi benchmarks.
Would it be smart to keep my new Fire Stick in the packaging until a solution is found to prevent updates? I’m worried about the 3rd party app prevention talk. I prefer my fire stick because of play services and the apps that enables.
Any news of a UK release? All quiet here!
I think Amazon view their UK customer base as gullible, hence them offloading their stock of old FireTV sticks in the UK. I imagine they are expecting a large demand from people in the UK to be able to watch the motoring rubbish that they paid a mint for.
Hiya there,
got Amazon Fire TV 2 4K,just have a issue after update to 5.2.1.1 with NTFS devices in Kodi. Need to root it. D u have any idea how? Don´t want to stuck the device. Just some pretty simple manual how to do it?:(thanks in advance
Does the new stick allow for OTG support? If I’m not mistaken, the old one lost support via an update (for usb to Ethernet). Does this one happen to support it out of the box?
Thanks!
I could also be mistaken, but I don’t think the first gen stick ever supported OTG running stock firmware. The only way to get it was to root and enable it. I believe that’s still possible as of the latest firmware (if rooted). Amazon did have Ethernet listed as “Optional” on their product specs comparison, but told AFTVNews that was a typo. My guess is that OTG still lives inactively in the firmware, but it’s disabled by default on the stock firmware. If that’s the case you’d have to wait for Amazon or a new rooting method for the new stick to get ethernet support back.
Same as that twitter user, I find that the screen scaling is broke, or maybe removed on purpose. There is no fuction to change it on the FTV stick, but rather they just tell you to adjust from the TV set.
FWIW – the arrows go past the screen edge, but when in the main GUI and apps, the picture appears to be scaled correctly.
“Say goodbye to buffering,” is a quote from the Fire TV Stick 2 box images you posted earlier. For comparison, can you possibly create an instance of buffering with other Amazon devices (as opposed to stuttering) that this device eliminates? I have a hunch that an older generation Fire TV or Fire TV Stick is not the root cause of buffering.
On the Stick 2 device or on its power adapter does it indicate how many Amps it draws (or watts and voltage — from which amps can be computed)?
The first generation was 1A.
The Fire TV Stick 2 comes with the exact same power adapter as the Fire TV Stick 1. Same exact model number and specs. 5 Watts, 5 Volts, 1 Amp.
My early impression, is this stick is noticably slower than my 4k FTV boxes. Both in terms of wifi, and use. I ran a speedtest on my 4k box last night and got over 200meg. The stick is in the 90s. Also, getting some lag moving around Kodi, etc…
So far the device does not seem noticably faster than the old stick, but it’s early.
Have you tested both bands, 2.4GHz and 5GHz?
No, I just testing 5ghz, which is usually 90-100meg. I doubt 2.4ghz will be any faster.
This was probably asked already but I do not know the answer….will I be able to use Bluetooth headphones with the Fire TV stick 2? If no, is there a work around where I plug in headphones or use Bluetooth headphones with my iPhone and the Amazon app? This is a great feature with the new Roku streaming stick…
Yes, you can connect Bluetooth headphones. You could on the older Sticks as well since the early Spring.
Also finding the new stick will not seem to play 10bit files. It tries, but continuiously buffers. It DOES play hevc though.
Amazon’s device spec lists the Fire TV Stick 2 as “Main Profile Level 4.0, Color space 8-bit support” while the Fire TV 2 is listed as “Main 10 Profile Level 5.0, Color space 8-bit and 10-bit input but just 8-bit output”
Has anyone tried Playstation Vue yet?
Can anyone who got their stick confirm if the overscan adjustment has been removed? thanks
Fire TV stick 2- display calibration is removed. No way to adjust on stick. The calibration setting shows arrows going outside the screen, but can’t adjust. Kodi screen is now cut off on the edges…. everybody seeing it this way?
At least Kodi can be adjusted within settings. It’s odd Amazon left the section in the settings, but don’t actually allow you to adjust it. They tell you to change it on your TV, but most TVs don’t have an overscan adjustment. I don’t get it.
Is it possible to use the wifi channels > 48 with 5Ghz? The first fire tv stick didn’t support those. So what about the new fire tv stick?
why will my fire stick not take my router password?
tried everything
My fire stick is warm to the touch tho I have not used it for 2 or more hours. When it’s in use, it’s hot. Now it’s just warm. Does anyone else’s do that? Will it stay warm always?
hooked my fire stick up last night. had the Channel Guide up in the HOME but after scrolling around looking at all the offerings and downloading 1 local newstation, when I go back to HOME, the channel Guide is no longer there and after over an hour and reboots still unable to find it… what’s up ?